


Shattered Destinies

by greenhouse793



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 5x13 alternate, Descent into Madness, Gen, bad punctuation and pretentious adjectives, but even years later i'm still pretty proud of it, seriously this one's weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 17:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11605488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenhouse793/pseuds/greenhouse793
Summary: How does it feel to be one side of something broken? One half of something that will never be?





	Shattered Destinies

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from fanfiction.net, where I deleted it along with my other works several years ago. 
> 
> Written between seasons 3 & 4
> 
> I... Yeah. I have no excuse but fully blame the eccentric prof for the weird writing intensive course I was taking at the time.

Savor the ethereal allure, this kaleidoscope of prime colour. It both appeals to and revolts the senses. Hear the ringing buzz of emptiness. Smell the tangible despair, thick in the air like a swarm of black flies. Taste the rust and sweat, drown in its tangy cloy. Touch the sticky pools of spilled life, paint your face with it, let it run through your hair.

And the colour – look at the colour. The shimmering locks of spun gold, glinting in the yellow glow of the smoldering midday star. Eyes blue as the sea, echoed in the vast stretches of the cloudless sky. See them turn to glass, slowly so slowly. See them fade and pale. Watch as they slip away, mocking you with every pained breath of your failure as you watch the shattering of your destiny. See everything – that golden hair, just as soft as you remember, those beautiful cerulean eyes, now clouded over in the sleep of the ages – watch as it is slowly consumed by an ever-blossoming rose.

Its petals are so wet – so sticky between your fingers and acrid in your nostrils. Over and over again, it stabs you in the heart, in your very soul, piercing you with its thorns of despondency as you flounder in defeat. It is everywhere, matting gold and slowly dripping into blue. It covers your hands, soaks into your trousers where you kneel, staining your shirt. Your hands fist into your hair, tightening painfully in a futile attempt to anchor your mind through the endless agony as you see everything you have worked for all these years deteriorate in a rush of red.

It is in your hair, ensnaring your fingers in its sticky tangle, dripping down your face.

_ Drippy, drippy, drippy drop. _

_ Sticky, sticky, sticky. _

_ Red. Red. Red. Black _ .

Black is the torment of your breast, the misery that crawls through your throat, suffocating you with its thick, ropey coils. They are stuck to you, a part of your flesh.

_ Sticky, sticky _ .

You can never be free, never separate from the torturous despair.

How does it feel to be one side of something broken? One half of something that will never be?

_ Red. Red. Black. _

_ Drippy, drippy, drop. _

Hear it sing to you, whispering in its harsh, grating croon. Feel the rage churn within you, bubbling, angry sludge. How it yearns to spill over, to seep along the land and dominate the betrayal in a cloud of black smoke.

_ Red. Red. Black. _

_ Sticky, sticky. _

It would be so easy. So easy, here at destiny's end, with the world already fallen at your feet. Golden hair, looks more like orange, now. So sticky, run your fingers through it. So soft, like strands of a dying sun. It would be so easy. So easy to take back what was lost to you. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the world for _your_ world.

_ Red. Red. Black. _

You glance in disgust at the small, broken body, hurled feet away. You took his life, ripped it from his very flesh before he could even gasp the breath to scream. But it wasn't enough. It can never be enough. You should have killed him long ago, when you were gifted the chance in a jeweled box, tied with a silver bow. But you were too weak. You couldn't plunge the knife into the box's breast, but instead placed it in the river where it was able to float to the safety of a pharaoh's wife. Where it was able to fester and become the very cancer that would tear apart your world.

_ Black. Black. Black. Black. _

The shattering of your destiny all comes down to you. It is tangible, in the prismatic evidence of failure, clotted beneath your fingernails. It is in the mournful whisper of the wind, the stench of death as it putrefies deep within your nostrils. You can taste it, thick in your throat, the desperate thirst for revenge. The hatred of the kingdom you had given up everything for, but had betrayed you in a heartbeat. They would have sentenced you to death if they knew your true self. But because your secret remained so, instead it was the other half of the coin that was shattered. All your fault. A life for a life.

_ Black. Black. Black. _

In the end, it was so easy. So easy for you to set fire to the world, letting it burn brightly, the smell of singed flesh seeping into your senses, the taste of smoke heavy upon your tongue, filling your lungs with ash. Hear their screams mingle with the angry snapping of wood and stone in your relentless flames. Feel the pain as you watch the fire slowly eat away at your skin.

And as you dance upon the ashes of a shattered destiny, their screams of terror and torment could never parallel the agonized cries of your soul.

_ Black. Black. Black. Black. Black. _


End file.
